


Now at Last the Worst Is Over

by MagitekUnit05953234



Series: Like Real People Do [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chronic Pain, Discussions of death, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Post-Canon, Self-Worth Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27064639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: “I barely know who anyone is anymore. I’m not supposed to be here and I can tell. I can feel it.”“Noct—”“You have lives. Families. The world put back together. What did you put all of that in jeopardy for? Why would you put everything at risk like that?”
Relationships: Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: Like Real People Do [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1189523
Comments: 3
Kudos: 60
Collections: Promptis Big Bang 2020





	Now at Last the Worst Is Over

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2020 Promptis Big Bang. Collaborating artist is @ [hai_uq ](https://www.instagram.com/hai_uq/?hl=en) on instagram.

“Oh shit.”

“What is it?” Noct watches Prompto fish his phone out of his pocket with great difficulty seeing as he’s still sitting down. Prompto bites at his lip absently as he apparently checks his notifications, and Noct can’t really see his screen from here so he just has to sit and wait.

“Alright,” Prompto sighs and pressed a hand to his eyes for a moment. “I gotta run. Aranea’s gotta take care of some stuff with the ‘guard and I don’t wanna leave the kid alone. Ignis’ll be by in like an hour, though. You gonna be okay in the meantime?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine,” Noct blinks. “Who’s the kid…?”

Prompto, in the midst of packing up the cards he brought from home to help keep Noct entertained during his visit, freezes. He laughs quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand. “Oh, uh. I’ve kinda been taking care of a kid for a while now. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, really and I couldn’t just leave her, you know?”

A rush of something cold and viscous rushes into Noct’s ribs and sticks on the insides. “You adopted a _kid_? You didn’t tell me. You didn’t mention it and I took you into Insomnia with me… you could have died!”

“Noct, I—” Prompto groans, finishing up his quick tidy of the space he had been occupying before dropping right back down in his chair. “It just… never came up, okay? And like… things were always dangerous before. She knew that there was always a chance I wouldn’t come back from a job. Everyone knew that about everyone else. It wouldn’t have been anything she wasn’t prepared for, okay? And she wouldn’t have been alone if something did happen. It’s not like I’m her _dad_ or anything, she’s just living in my apartment more or less. Everyone’s been taking care of her just as much as I have.”

 _What_. Noct heaves in a deep breath, wishing the icy grot accumulating in his chest would just melt away. Prompto doesn’t seem to notice, eyes averted to his feet. “Prompto, just because someone knows you could die doesn’t make it any easier to handle. Did you think I was fine with what happened to my old man just because he spent my whole life—”

Prompto’s phone goes off again, this time ringing extendedly rather than just beeping a quick text tone. With a mouthed apology to Noct, Prompto takes the call. Noct can’t hear what’s said on the other end.

“Hey ‘Nea,” Prompto grimaces. “Yeah, I know. — I’m on my way, I swear. — I’m not gonna get lost. — I _swear_ I’m not gonna get lost. — Hey, who out of the two of us has actually lived here for the past decade? — I thought so. Look, I’m just saying bye to Noct then I’ll be on my way, okay? If Avis gets annoyed about the wait just have them call me, yeah? I’ll be there in a moment.”

There’s barely a moment between Prompto hanging up the phone, saying his farewells, and ducking his way out the door. Noct is left in his hospital bed, still too shaky to walk more than a few steps unassisted, not even able to finish up the conversation he was having properly before Prompto dipped out. All he has left to do now is mess around on his phone —a decent if old thing that Ignis unearthed for him seeing as his old one has been lost to time or the Crystal or something— and read until someone else shows up to keep him company.

Noct sighs and turns over in his bed, drawing the covers over his head. He knows he ought to get up and do some of his stretches, maybe try to walk a few circles of the room with the help of the handrails set in each wall, but he doesn’t really feel like it. Ignis will probably make him do it anyway when he comes in an hour or whatever, so what’s the harm in resting for a bit in the meantime?

It’s been a week since Noct woke up, disoriented and panicked after fulfilling his end of the prophesied murder-suicide plot he’d been thrown into by fate. His first few moments of being alive once again consisted of being smothered by his friends and certain that he had failed, and that he had to go through all the pain of dying and couldn’t even manage to do that right and now the world was doomed.

That wasn’t quite the case, but seeing sunlight beaming into the infirmary over Prompto’s shoulder did very little to abate the panic attack that immediately set in and the subsequent anxiety lingered for nearly a day— bad enough that he couldn’t manage to eat or speak at length with anyone without feeling like he was going to pass out or throw up.

Despite asking quite a few times so far, Noct still hasn’t gotten a straight answer on how he survived. No one seems willing to offer the information on their own either, so it is beginning to look like that may be something he will never know. Thinking about it too much on his own is a surefire way to kick off a fearful spiral so Noct is learning to divert his attention away from it whenever he finds himself pondering it. However Noct managed to avoid biting it for good after killing Ardyn, it left Noct generally weak and fatigued. Though he spent much of his life lethargic thanks to his chronic pain and poor mental health, this is on a far different level. Noct can hardly stay awake for eight hours out of the day, and while he can walk to a point, it takes far too much energy for him to _want_ to most of the time. Everyone around him is positive that with time and effort he’ll be back to his old self, but Noct isn’t so sure.

“How are you feeling?” Ignis asks as he enters the room, drawing Noct out of a half-doze he had fallen into after Prompto left.

“Tired,” Noct scrubs at his eyes. “Same as usual.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ignis leaves his things on the little rolling table near the door and stops, head tilted slightly, as Noct begins to divest himself of his blankets and struggle upright. “Noct…?”

“I’m gonna do a few circuits of the room. You were gonna ask me to do that anyway, right?”

“Oh,” Ignis adjusts his visor. “Yes, I suppose I was.”

The first few steps are deceptively easy. Noct holds the handrail to his right as he slowly makes his way forward with Ignis hovering at his left in case Noct falls. He hasn’t since day two post-death, but he isn’t looking to repeat it so the silent and unobtrusive offer of support is appreciated.

“Hey, Ignis?” Noct asks as he slows to a stop halfway through his first circle of the infirmary room that has become his home for the time being. His knees are already feeling a little weak, and he takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he has done this circuit before. He is well and able to do it again.

“Yes, Noct?”

“So… Prompto has a kid, now?”

Ignis hums. He waits patiently as Noct steadies himself, then follows a few steps behind as Noct resumes his lap. “He would be the first to say that Helena isn’t _his_ child, but Prompto has more or less raised her since Aranea brought her to Lucis.”

“Brought her to Lucis…?”

“Helena was found in stasis in a magitek facility two years after your disappearance. Aranea brought her here and insisted that Prompto and Maris do what they could to look after her considering their shared origins. She has stayed with them since, though we have all looked after her quite a bit as needed. She’s a lovely child. Fairly quiet, though the Night did have that effect on people.”

Noct swallows. He knew things changed a lot in his absence, a decade is a long time after all, but Prompto managed to gain a whole family. He has his sister and now a kid, and all the friends he made during the apocalypse. Noct still feels twenty and stupid, and Prompto’s carved out an entire life for himself and is thriving.

Noct is happy for him, of course. It’s great that he has people who love him and a life he enjoys. It just makes the decade-long divide between them feel even wider, though. To Noct, that last kiss before having to flee from the daemons flooding Zegnautus and subsequently being absorbed into the Crystal could have been a week ago. Maybe two.

“He didn’t say anything. None of you did.”

“He asked us to refrain from mentioning it. He didn’t want to have to argue with you about returning to Insomnia in case it would be one of the… last things he were to do with you.” “Oh.” Yet another reminder that they hadn’t been sure that whatever they did would work. Noct’s survival truly was a tossup. He should count himself lucky that he’s made it, he supposes. Right now he just feels odd about it. “I guess…”

They make another few rounds of the room, the last one much slower than the rest as Noct had to keep stopping to catch his breath. It isn’t until Ignis settles Noct back in bed that Ignis sits himself down in the chair that’s seen an unending rotation of visitors since Noct awoke.

“I’m sure Prompto will bring him by one of these days. He doesn’t like to leave him on his own if he can help it, and Maris has been busy as of late.”

“Maris, yeah… what’s he been up to? Prompto hasn’t really talked about him much.”

“Maris uses she/her pronouns now,” Ignis corrects. Noct opens his mouth to apologize, but Ignis cuts him off. “My apologies. I believe we all assumed someone else had informed you. I suppose we were not all on the wrong page. She came out as a woman several years ago. As for what she has been doing with her time, she became quite involved with the greenhouse projects in the western reaches of the outcity.”

So… that clone they rescued from Zegnautus is a woman now and Prompto has a kid… what else hasn’t he mentioned? What else has Noctis missed?

“Well, uh. Good for her. That’s cool.”

The rest of Ignis’s visit goes about the same as the one yesterday and the day before. Ignis catches Noct up on the state of the world in bits and pieces between idle chatter and light physical therapy under the watchful eye of Asteria, the Leidan infirmary’s “officially unofficial” healer.

They don’t talk that much more about Prompto.

* * *

The sun is quite nice, Noct decides. He wasn’t deprived of it for ten years like too many were, but he remembers the fear as daylight began to dwindle after Altissia’s fall, and the memory of the Night after he returned from the Crystal —brief as his experience with it was— is not one he likes to remember. The sky was a green-black haze, and the air was thick with a humidity that never lifted. If there was wind, it was too weak for Noct to feel it. Every aspect of existing beneath that rotting sky was oppressive and bleak.

After that, brief though Noct’s encounter with it all was, he has definitely gained a new appreciation for the sun. Today he’s installed himself on a wooden bench outside the Leidan infirmary, watching the inhabitants of Trost bustle from place to place.

Trost itself is entirely unfamiliar to Noct. It sprang up between the old Hunter Outpost in Keycatrich and Hammerhead out of necessity early in the Night, apparently. With the daemons growing in number and ferocity, long trips on darkened roads were not ideal. Naturally, more and more people stopped by the Fayemoor Haven to rest and eventually people began to leave tents and supplies there for other travelers who may have had worse luck than themselves. A small town grew up out of that and as soon as generators could be found that weren’t needed in Lestallum or another of the major outposts at the time, they were permanently installed as the figurative cornerstone of Trost.

It’s sort of easier to be somewhere that Noct can’t compare to his memories. Sure, he likely stayed at Feyemoor a couple times, but usually when he and the rest of the guys were in the area they tended to keep on going down the road until they hit Hammerhead to take advantage of the caravan that Cindy would lend to them for a reduced rate as long as they didn’t mention it to Cid. To be somewhere that is steeped in memories of the good ol’ days is unsettling at best, and makes Noct feel like he’s looking at several films of the same place superimposed over one another. Everything is off-kilter and unfamiliar where it shouldn’t be and it hurts to think about too much.

Noct’s phone rings. He startles, pulled out of his loose musings. He answers without checking the caller ID, as only a couple people have his number anyway.

“Hey, Noct. Where’d you go?”

“Prompto,” Noct clears his throat, straightening up in his seat. “What’s up?”

“You’re not in your room, man.”

“Oh. I’m outside the side door. There’s a bench out here so I’m getting some sun.”

“Right on, right on.” Prompto pauses. “Uh, I have a special visitor for you if you’re up to it? Helena wanted to say hi, but if you’re not up to it right now…”

“No!” Noct blurts out, cringing at his tone. “I mean, I mean no, I’m up to it. If you wanna come meet me out here? Or I could come inside. I might need a moment if you want that though—”

“Nah, we’ll come see you in a second! Hold tight.”

The call ends before Noct has a chance to respond. He waits for about a minute, straightening his shirt —rumpled from the nap he took in it a few hours ago— and finger combs his hair —he forgot to properly comb it when he woke up— as he does.

“Hey, hey,” Prompto calls out as he opens the infirmary’s side door. “Look who’s here, Helena!”

Noct turns to see a little girl much closer to his face than he was expecting. She’s leaning over the armrest of the bench. “Ah, I… hello. I’m Noct.”

“Hi,” the girl says. She looks a _lot_ like Prompto. Eerily so. It makes sense considering their shared origin, but it’s still weird to actually see. It’s like familial resemblance taken to the extreme. Her eyes are Prompto’s exact shade of blue, her eyebrows have that familiar little perpetual downturn to them, and her short hair has that same cowlick Noct used to tease Prompto about before Prompto figured out how to style his hair to hide it. It’s like they’re identical twins, but somehow she was born twenty years —give or take— later. That isn’t quite that far from the truth, actually. Technically. Gods, that’s weird.

Helena blinks, then seems to realize just how much she’s leaning into Noct’s space as she suddenly steps back and into Prompto’s legs. She remains there, nearly standing on Prompto’s feet, and Prompto shrugs as if to say _what can you do_.

“Hey, Noct. Doing alright?” Prompto smiles, casually resting a hand on top of Helena’s head. Like he does it all the time. He must, if it’s as automatic as it looks to be.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Woke up a little while ago. Figured I’d see the sights for a little bit. Get out of that room.”

“Awesome,” Prompto smiles just the same as he did ten years ago. Noct’s heart flips. “Mind if we sit with you?”

“Go for it,” Noct leans forward and scoots his walker to the other side of the bench, freeing up space for both Prompto and Helena to sit. They do, Prompto on the far end and Helena in the middle.

“Well,” Prompto starts, then falters. He’s jiggling his leg up and down a little bit. “Helena, want to tell Noct what we’re doing today?”

Helena glances up at Noct, then down at her hands in her lap. After her initial greeting, she seems to have remembered that she’s —according to Ignis, anyway— shy. “I’m on my lunch break.”

“She likes to help Maris out at the greenhouses,” Prompto explains. “She’s too young to work there —I mean, of course she’s too young, she’s eight— but they let her water the plants and show her what good produce looks like. She likes it and it means she’s basically got the whole place babysitting her when I’m out, so I can’t complain.”

Noct can’t help but smile at that. When he was younger, before the Marilith, he remembers he used to compel his nannies to let him follow one of the gardeners around the courtyards, watching intently as flowers would be planted, topiary was pruned, and weeds were uprooted. Once, Noct got to plant a bunch of marigolds all on his own, and the little red-yellow-orange patch of flowers had stayed there unchanged more or less until he left for his wedding. It must be long gone by now. Like everything else from that time.

Noct’s chest tightens.

Best not to think about that anymore.

“Your lunch break, huh? You like working at the greenhouses.”

“I like the tomatoes,” Helena confirms. She drops her voice to what Noct would generously call a stage-whisper. “Sometimes I eat a couple when they’re red. Don’t tell anybody, okay?”

Noct meets Prompto’s eyes over the top of Helena’s head. Prompto rolls his eyes with a small grin, mouthing that they let her do that.

“Well, it’s good that you help out. I’m sure the workers really like to have your help.”

“Auntie Maris says I’m their best worker!”

They chat a little more. Noct becomes more used to how much Helena looks —and sort of sounds— like Prompto the longer it goes on. Eventually she gets bored with sitting with the adults and goes to sit down in the dirt near a patch of scraggly dandelions several yards away from the bench, plucking the leaves and folding them in her hands.

“Quite the little family you’ve got now.” Prompto laughs. “I mean, I guess so. Maris keeps me in line, anyway. And we all make sure that Helena’s taken care of. Plus Gladio and Iggy… well, you know them. They’re on top of things.”

“Yeah.”

Noctis watches Helena play with the weeds. He can feel Prompto watching him.

* * *

“What do you think about this one?”

“It’s okay,” Noct shifts his weight back and forth through his arms, testing the balance of the walker he’s been presented with. “Sturdy. Looks a little different than the ones I’ve seen before.”

“Plenty of Hunters had to use these at one point or another during the Night. Lots of injuries, and none of ‘em wanted to suck it up and use the walker if it looked like an ‘old geezer’s thing.’ Stupid,” Asteria rolled her eyes. “They say necessity breeds invention, right? Well for me, frustration did it. I was sick of having to restitch wounds because stubborn-ass fragile men didn’t wanna look old, so I designed these and sent ‘em off to the engineers in South Lestallum. Took some time but we got a good set of these. Seemed to help.”

“It has a seat built in?” Noct turned the walker around, tentatively putting weight on the flat cushion centered beneath the handles.

“Sure does. And a backrest. We just gave you the black covers but there’s a bunch of different colors for those if you’d like. Helps to have somewhere to sit when the standing gets tough, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Noct swallows. It had been a long time since he needed something like this. When he was a kid, still recovering from the Marilith attack, he had to use a walker once he graduated from the wheelchair. He didn’t think he’d be back to using one so soon. “Thank you.”

“Don’t look so glum about it,” Asteria taps the walker’s backrest twice. “No shame in needing something like this. Most people do at some point.”

Noct has to admit that she’s right. He certainly didn’t have any issue with his father or Ignis needing accessibility tools, it just feels odd to need it for himself. Especially at twenty… no, thirty. Thirty, that’s right.

Noct messes with the various adjustments for the seat and the handlebars as Asteria finishes up his discharge paperwork.

“Now, follow up with Dr. Fortemps within the week. I may be a decent healer but I’m hardly a proper physical therapist, so there isn’t too terribly much more I can do for you here. Feel free to return if you have any urgent issues before you are able to see Fortemps, of course.”

“Right,” Noct takes the stack of discharge paperwork Asteria holds out to him and flips through it, not really absorbing any of the information within. “I’ll um. I’ll do that.”

“Do you need a refresher on how to best use your mobility aid before you leave? I’m aware you’ve been using the standard fare here, but these are a little different. It’s all printed out in the packet if not.”

“I think I’m alright,” Noct tucks the packet in the basket beneath the walker’s seat. “Thank you, Asteria. I… well. I don’t know what to say. You pretty much brought me back to life.”

“Well now, the honor for _that_ goes to your Crownsguard,” Asteria smiles lightly, clasping her hands in front of herself. “Gods only know how they did it. In that vein— I, as well as everyone else in the infirmary, do want to thank you for what you did for us. It has been nice to see the sun again.”

“Oh,” Noct never knows how to respond to this. “Right. Uh… no problem. It was my job.”

And then he’s out in the hallway, his possessions in a thick plastic bag looped onto the handles of his walker. Gladio’s waiting for him beside the door, leaning against the wall and typing something on his phone.

“Good to go,” Noct says.

“Alright,” Gladio looks Noct —plus walker— up and down. “How’s it feel?”

“The walker? Fine,” Noct wheels it forward and back, as if to demonstrate its fitness for… wheeling? He isn’t quite sure what he meant by doing that but Gladio nods approvingly regardless.

“We’ve got an apartment set up on the other side of Trost that we’re staying in at the moment,” Gladio says as he half-leads Noct down the hall toward the front lobby of the infirmary. “We were thinking on releasing it to the hunters to set up for civilians once more of them come out here from Lestallum, but if you like it you could probably keep it.”

“I dunno,” Noct shrugs. “I guess I’d have to see it.”

“We have other places set up that we’re still holding for the moment,” Gladio says. “We had to travel a lot, so we have a dedicated place to stay in every corner of Lucis, almost. So if you’d rather be somewhere else, we have a shitton of options.”

At Gladio’s insistence, Noct takes a seat as Gladio presents Noct’s discharge papers to the man at the infirmary’s front desk. It’s disconcerting, to imagine this apartment Noct had never even heard of today. A temporary home, or maybe just a roof to shield his friends from the apocalypse. Either way, nothing he had any idea about until now. They have a lot of them, as well. It’s odd. After their roadtrip, more or less homeless, hopping between haven and hotel and —on several notable occasions— unwarded caves, it’s weird to think about everyone having found something like a home outside of Insomnia. Noct’s glad for them of course, but being glad doesn’t stop him from feeling at odds with the new status quo.

“What happened to Cape Caem?” Noct asks once he’s settled into Gladio’s truck. Seeing Gladio in the driver’s seat was yet another oddity. Gladio had learned to drive when he was thirteen just as Ignis had, but rarely drove in Insomnia because he preferred the metro. By the time they traveled outside of Insomnia together, he was so out of practice that Ignis more or less banned Gladio from the wheel thanks to his penchant for hard braking and unnecessarily tight turns.

“It’s still standing,” Gladio tucks his arm behind Noct’s headrest as Gladio cranes his neck to see so he could back up without hitting anything. Noct watches Gladio’s familiar yet terrifically unfamiliar features shift as he speaks, free to observe with Gladio preoccupied. “We pulled Iris, Talcott, and everyone out a few months in and brought them to Lestallum. It was safer, and for a while Cape Caem was a popular landing place for refugees who sailed here from Altissia. It was just easier to handle all of them if we didn’t have to keep tabs on the kids, too.”

“And now?”

“It’s more or less just been another safe house. I haven’t been out there in more than a year. There wasn’t much out that ways worth traveling for unless you were looking to fight for your goddamn life. Last I knew, it’s still alright. Garden’s long gone and the gods know the whole place could use a coat of paint and some repair work here and there, but it should be more or less the same as when you last saw it.”

Noct stares down at his hands as Gladio turns back to face the road. From the corner of his eye he can see Gladio driving first with the usual 10-and-2 setup, then switching to driving with his knee as soon as they’re on a straight stretch of road.

The last time Noct was in Cape Caem was the day they departed for Altissia. Noct remembers being scared that day and trying his best not to show it. He knew that Altissia would probably be crawling with Imperials and he knew that, regardless of Luna having already declared her support for Noct and Prompto’s relationship, Prompto was sure to be strung tight with that worry that had always seemed to pull at the edges of his brain, the surety that any moment he would be forbidden the things that made him happy and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Noct always hated seeing that fear wind Prompto up and stretch him thin.

Noct was afraid of all the wrong things about Altissia. It wasn’t the imperials that killed Luna, it wasn’t the imperials that drove the city into the sea, it wasn’t the imperials that blinded Ignis, it wasn’t the imperials that drove his friends apart and turned the world dark.

And Prompto’s fear? He gained so, so many more and Noct wasn’t there for any of it.

_“Why are you here?”_

_“I’m one of them. And so is he.”_

_“I murdered him. Shit. Noct, I've never… I had to. I_ had _to. ”_

Noct’s mouth dries. What had he been doing while his friends suffered? He’d been locked up in a rock, not even able to tell that a decade was passing. Bahamut had warned him of his fate, and then he drifted in a half-sleep for what felt like a few hours. Then he was spit back out in Angelgard to a world changed, to a body that was his yet not, and to friends that had lived their lives without him for long enough to where Noct couldn’t picture himself comfortably at their sides anymore.

Shit.

* * *

The apartment is… nice. It’s nice.

It’s small, sort of. Way smaller than Noct’s old apartment, but that makes sense.

It’s sort of comparable to the apartment Prompto had after his parents made him move out the minute it was legal to. Not ramshackle or derelict or anything like that, but small. Not a lot of windows. There’s two small bedrooms, a bathroom with a cubicle shower, and one room that’s a living room and kitchen and has a little table for a “dining room” in the corner. The living room’s just a couple mismatched chairs and a coffee table. There’s a pack of cards —missing the queen of spades, which has been replaced with one of the jokers wearing a sharpie crown— and a battered copy of The Cosmogony in the table’s single drawer.

The first night in that place, Noct’s left to his own devices for a little while as Gladio and Ignis go to Trost’s marketplace, trying to see if they can find anything fresh to go with something in the canned good stockpile stacked in the cabinet by the fridge.

Noct sits on the red chair, fiddles around with his phone for a little bit before becoming bored with the couple of entertainment apps that came pre-installed, and decides to rifle through the apartment for anything interesting. He doesn’t get far before finding The Cosmogony.

He knows the verses. Most people know the majority of them even if they aren’t particularly religious. Noct isn’t surprised by anything he finds when flipping through the book, but something about the final page still makes him feel sick.

 _Long live thy Line, and this Stone divine, For the Night when All comes to Naught_.

Long live the Caelums… until the Night is done. And then what?

Noct isn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to live after the Night. He was never meant to get this far. He doesn’t know how to lead a country— though at this point there isn’t really a country to _lead_. He never prepared for anything else, though. He always wanted a life outside of his royal responsibilities but he doesn’t have the slightest idea what a life like that would be. Now he’s been thrown into it against the wishes of the gods and the rules of the universe, and he’s just.

He’s just here in this apartment. The gods are gone. His magic is gone. The friends he knew are gone, replaced by strangers just a couple inches to the left of the people he once knew.

What is he supposed to do?

Noct’s phone pings. It’s Prompto, asking how Noct likes the apartment. Noct taps out and sends a vague review, not quite glowing but still more or less positive. Prompto shoots back a congrats and a promise to visit in a few days. He had returned to Lestallum with Helena the day after their talk in the garden, and hadn’t been back since. Helena’s in school apparently, some sort of cross between daycare and a vague approximation of pre-Night second grade. It meets a few times a week, and Prompto was adamant that Helena not miss a day if she wasn’t sick.

_“School’s important, y’know? I mean, I know it’s not like anything we had back in the day, but she’s gotta learn. I don’t want her to have to do it all when she’s older. S’not good for people to learn that way, I think. I heard that somewhere, I guess. I don’t know.”_

Noct banters back and forth with Prompto a little, but it's awkward. He doesn’t have much to talk about, and Prompto seems to always have a lot going on. Noct isn’t exactly a stranger to conversations where the most input he gives is a vague affirmative or denial here and there, some acknowledgements of his attention, but it was never that way with Prompto. They had always hit it off so well, lapsing easily into conversation starting from the day they met.

Everything is so different.

Noct ends up asleep on the couch by the time Ignis and Gladio get home from the store. He doesn’t wake up until Ignis is done cooking dinner and makes a conscious effort to wake Noct up, and Noct still feels groggy as he sits down to eat.

“What do you think?”

Noct pauses, the tines of his fork resting lightly on top of the pasta he had been about to swirl around it. “What do I think…?”

“Of this place,” Gladio elaborates. “Fit for a king?”

Noct grimaces, ducking his head so the others hopefully can’t see it behind his hair. “Fit for me, anyway. It’s good. Just unfamiliar.”

“You’ll learn it in time,” Ignis assures him. “Are you able to navigate it well enough? We didn’t have measurements for your walker until this morning, so we estimated when testing the furniture spacing.”

“It’s fine. Great, actually. I can get everywhere I’ve tried to, so far.”

“Let us know if you find anywhere you can’t get it through,” Gladio speaks with his hands just like he always did. Noct isn’t sure why that seems so important. “I can fix it.”

“I mean, I can probably move the furniture myself if I have to,” Noct says. “It’s not like the chairs or anything are that heavy.”

“I’d like to see you move that couch on your own. Or your bed.”

“Gladiolus,” Ignis shakes his head. “What he means, Noct, is that we are willing to help make this place more accessible if there are any issues. We did our best beforehand, but there will likely be some things we… overlooked, so to speak.”

Noct promises to let them know. They seem satisfied enough with that, and they continue eating. It isn’t exactly quiet, but Ignis and Gladio hold most of the conversation between them without Noct’s input. Noct just listens, and tries to piece together these new people he’s always known.

* * *

Prompto first visits about a week into Noct’s stay at the apartment. It is, coincidentally, also the day Noct decides he wants to see Cape Caem for himself.

“I was thinking… I mean, it was my dad’s, you know? But not really in the same way that the Citadel was. I wanted to see if maybe it’s still livable. When I was a kid I always wanted to take a vacation there. “ Noct knows it’s sort of a childish thing to still want, but he does miss that place and the ocean beside it. “Never really worked out, but I guess the dream still lives.”

“So you wanna move out there?” Prompto asks. He’s sat opposite Noct on the couch, the two of them both sitting with their backs against their respective armrests.

“Maybe. I wanna see it first, but I think so. It would be quiet.”

The first day or two had been pretty quiet, but it didn’t take long for people to figure out where the King of Light —gods, Noct hates that title— was staying. Now whenever he ventures out onto the tiny wooden balcony outside the living room, he’s met by a small crowd of people below wanting to speak with him. To thank him. Like he did anything but die just like he was supposed to.

At least, he died for a moment. A minute or two.

It makes him nervous, and a little sick. Noct doesn’t go out there too much anymore. He thanks his lucky stars that no one has tried to actually get into the apartment, but he doesn’t trust that people will restrain themselves for that if he stays out of sight long enough. The rotation of hunters posted outside the apartment door do little to reassure Noct of his continued privacy and safety. Not that he doubts their abilities, but well. He’s a little tired of being under watch anyway. He spent all of his life being tailed by Crownsguard, and though his friends technically served that function once Insomnia fell, it wasn’t really the same. Noct doesn’t like having gone back to being guarded again.

“It would be cool to see Caem again,” Prompto says. “I haven’t been in a little while. Once I had Helena I… well, I didn’t really want to go out that far anymore. Before that I was all over, y’know? Caem, Altissia, Niflheim even, sometimes. Seems like all I did was hunt and uh… well. I drank a lot, I guess.”

That’s new. Prompto never had a taste for alcohol before all this. He’d wrinkle his nose whenever Gladio would come back from a quick run to the store with a six pack, and declined everything from cocktails to beer to wine on the few times they risked going into a bar during their travels across Lucis. “You drank?”

“Ah,” Prompto colors and turns his head away. “Yeah. I did. I don’t anymore, though. I try not to, anyway. It’s not always… well. It’s not a problem these days. It’s fine.”

Noct tries not to imagine Prompto, pale and drawn and twenty years old, alone in a caravan with the sky green-black through the windows, making his way through bottles and bottles of beer that he despised the taste of. Saying _it’s not a problem these days_ means that at one point, it was.

Was that what it had been like, then?

Noct takes a deep breath. Tries not to picture it. Tells himself not to pry.

“I wouldn’t be able to come with,” Prompto starts talking so suddenly that Noct can’t help but jump in his seat a little. “To Caem, I mean. I have to keep Helena in school but… maybe when they set up more of a town out there. I know that for a while they had a base set up a mile or two away? There was a little greenhouse out there before the Night, so they had generators and a little town and a guard set up to take advantage of it before the Night hit. I dunno if people will wanna go out there, but if they set up a school then… maybe. I don’t know. I’ll still visit, though, when I can.”

“That would be good,” Noct has to put in effort to not sound disappointed. A part of him had been thinking… had been imagining the sort of life he and Prompto used to talk about, knowing that it wasn’t possible. A little apartment or maybe a house, somewhere out of the way. Somewhere where Noct wouldn’t have to worry about being a prince —king now, he supposes— and where they could just. Be together. Be domestic and in love and carve their own little life out of the land. Prompto could be a freelance photographer, work remotely and send his pictures in to magazines or something. Noct could fish, both to provide for them and maybe even to sell if they had a boat and lived on the coast.

They had known it was impossible. A pipe dream of a couple of teenagers who knew that their time together was limited. But now that the world has been remade, and Noct isn’t necessary anymore… well. For a brief moment, he had let himself think that maybe he could have that. Maybe he could just be himself and Prompto could pursue his dreams and things could be good. They wouldn’t have to worry about Imperials or daemons of prophecies or royal duties or anything like that.

It was stupid.

* * *

Ignis and Gladio are not exactly enthused about taking the trip out to Caem, citing the lack of proper scouting that has been done in that direction since the Dawn, but they cave easily enough after Noct brings up the worrying crowds of people gathering outside their apartment. It would only be a matter of time before some of them end up being the less friendly sort, right?

“I mean,” Noct feels a little like a kid called to the principal's office, sitting with both Ignis and Gladio, tall and older than Noct’s used to, standing over him as he speaks. “If the place is a wreck, it’s not like we have to stay. I just want to see if it’s possible. The trip would let me see more of Lucis, too. I wanna know what it’s like out there. I haven’t been able to see much of the world since I came back.”

That’s what does it. It takes the rest of the day to set up travel plans —the biggest delay is Ignis having to set someone to cover for his administrative work— but they decide to set out for Caem the next morning. It’s about sixteen hours of driving to Caem, so Gladio and the two hunters accompanying them as Noct’s official guard plan to swap out in the driver’s seat of a seven-seater van and make it all in one go, if possible.

Noct and Ignis sit in the back during the trip, with the rotating cast of drivers occupying the front two rows. Part of Noct wants to offer to drive the second time Gladio ends up behind the wheel, but he isn’t sure he can stay awake and aware long enough to make a shift with him at the wheel worth it. Not to mention his legs still get oddly weak at inopportune times. He doesn’t want to have to step on the break and not be able to get his foot to actually move.

“Just like old times, huh?” Gladio leans out and back into the space between the middle seats, turning around in what looks like a pretty uncomfortable position just so he can be vaguely faced in Noct and Ignis’s direction.

“Somewhat,” Ignis replies. “I recall being a passenger far less in the… ‘old times’ than I have been in recent years.”

“And you never drove,” Noct tacks on.

“Close enough,” Gladio shrugs. “Road tripping to Caem… all we’d need is Prompto and a tent in the trunk.”

“Now, I don’t think we ever put Prompto in the trunk. Not that I wasn’t tempted to, on occasion. Every time he would stand up and lean out of the car, well. You understand,” Ignis rests the knuckles of his lightly curled hand against his lips, like he’s deeply considering the possibilities. Noct lightly pushes against Ignis’s shoulder, and Ignis responds with an innocent tilt of the head and furrow of the brow.

“I seem to recall you did that as well, Noct. Perhaps we should have put you in the trunk as well. It would certainly have been safer than perching on the hardtop compartment.”

Noct dozes through much of the rest of the trip. Ignis shakes him awake as they come to a rough stop on gravel, and Noct emerges from the car to see the familiar rocky landscape leading up to the house by the cliff. Gone are the days of groceries being sold out of trucks outside the lot, gone too is the small bowl that used to sit by the fence that Iris would leave out for the stray cats that would wander around the property. It’s hard not to wonder what happened to all those cats.

“Well,” Noct clears his throat. “Are we good to go up?”

“Should be,” Gladio makes his way over from where he had been speaking to the two hunters who accompanied them on the trip. Richardson and Keay, Noct thinks their names are. At least, that’s what their surnames are. Since the hunters became more structured over the Night, very few of them go by their first names at this point. Dave is still Dave, though.

The trail up to the house is poorly-maintained, which Noct _should_ have expected considering the fact that this house hasn’t been properly lived in for ten years, but he is the first to admit that he doesn’t tend to think about that sort of thing. Thankfully, Noct’s walker is built to help navigate rough terrain, so he doesn’t have too much of an issue getting up the incline. Ignis sort of hovers behind Noct, closer than usual, but Noct honestly can’t be sure if Ignis is sticking close to make sure that Noct doesn’t get tripped up somehow or if Ignis is sticking close because he knows that whatever path Noct takes is one that Ignis himself is going to be less likely to stumble on.

“Ah,” Noct sighs once they’ve crested the hill and are presented with a full and proper view of the house. It was already a bit of a mess by the time that Iris, Talcott, and Monica lived there back in 756. To call it one now is an understatement. The old garden is nowhere to be seen, overgrown with grass and weeds and what appears to be a couple overzealous carrot plants if Noct is remembering the shape of the green tops right. The overgrowth is not limited to the garden, either. Ivy trails over the ground and up the sides of the house, crowding toward —and sometimes _through_ — shattered window panes. The paint that was fading and chipping a decade past is all but gone from the house’s siding, now reduced to patches of oddly pale paint over greyish wood. There’s holes in the left side of the house edged by what look like burn marks.

It’s awful.

But…

Something stirs in Noct at the sight. Not the usual dismay over the destruction of a world he slept through, but something else.

_“What if we built a place, out in the woods somewhere?”_

_“I… don’t know how to build a house.”_

_“I bet I could learn! I’ve got time. While you’re busy learning all that dumb royal stuff you aren’t gonna need, I’ll learn carpentry. I’m already good with tools and stuff, right? It’ll be easy. Probably.”_

_“Where are we gonna get the materials? Don’t tell me you’re also gonna become a lumberjack while I’m sitting in meetings?”_

_“Well… alright, maybe we won’t build a house. Let’s just fix one up! Find some cheap old fishing shack out in uh… what’s that place called… something something Highlands. I dunno. Kettleburg Highlands or something. There’s lots of woods out there, right?”_

_“Why are you asking me?”_

_“Listen, I know most of my geography from photo mags._ You _on the other hand, are supposed to rule the whole place. You gotta know where stuff is out there, right?”_

_“Uh… kind of. The basics, mostly. I never needed to know regional names for… what, ‘highlands?’ No idea.”_

_“Alright, alright. So,_ anyway, _let’s find a little house out there and fix it up. No one will find us if we go out of the way. We can go out there, just kinda live outside of all this royal crap. That’s good… right?”_

_“It sounds nice.”_

_“Yeah… yeah, it does. Eugh. Kind of sucks that we can’t really… I… uh… hey hey, let’s not be all sad about it! We got time now, so let’s just enjoy this, right?”_

The house is a wreck but…

They could fix it up.

Right?

“What do you think?” Noct asks. While he’d been pondering impossibilities, Gladio had been describing the state of the place to Ignis. Noct turns toward the two of them now.

“It’s not exactly livable at the moment,” Gladio says. “I think it’s in better shape than it looks, though. Other than those holes over there. Those would take some work to patch up right.”

“Can we do it?”

“You want to live here?” Ignis takes a moment aside to say something to Keay that is too quiet for Noct to hear. “I suppose it would be doable. It isn’t exactly practical but… after everything, a place to ourselves beyond the roads more commonly traveled does sound much more tempting than I thought it may.”

Noct hadn’t realized that he was hoping they could _all_ stay there, but hearing Ignis assume that he did makes him fully aware of how much he wants all three of his friends here with him. Prompto was always the first one to come to mind of course, considering how they were… together. But Ignis and Gladio being around was just as natural. As long as they wanted to be there, Noct wouldn’t have it any other way.

“So… yes or no?”

“It will take considerable effort and not a _small_ amount of money if conditions are as I imagine them to be,” Ignis pauses, considering. “But I do believe that we could make this work.”

* * *

The first thing to go are the holes in the walls. Noct stays updated on the progress through pictures sent to him through Gladio, who was sent them through someone he knows on the construction team. When Noct heard that there would be a construction team working on the house, he started to feel somewhat self conscious for drawing away important resources for the rebuilding of the world just for his own selfish desire for a little house by the sea, but supposedly these people are being paid quite well by Ignis and work on the house when they’re not scheduled in other more important places.

So, the first thing to go are the couple of large holes punched through the outer walls, then the interior gets cleared of debris. Apparently, there were quite a few small holes in the roof, because of which Noct is treated to several photos of every conceivable container laid out on the floors of the house to catch rainwater dripping through the shingles. There’s something funny about seeing someone’s styrofoam takeout box laid out on the ground filled with water.

Noct watches the progress happen in chunks, in stops and starts whenever the team has time. It’s odd to not be there in person, but the apartment in Trost is comfortable enough in the meantime. The constant shadowing by hunters or the rebuilt Glaive is just as annoying as it always was to Noct, but not because of the people guarding him at least. They’re alright, usually quiet but not afraid to talk to him if he strikes up a conversation. He always hated when people wouldn’t really be up to holding a conversation with him just because they were intimidated by his royal status. He never really thought of himself as all that.

“Caem’s almost done, huh?” Prompto yawns, stretching his arms above his head. He hadn’t been able to visit too terribly often thanks to his responsibilities with Maris and Helena, but today he brought Helena along. She’s been asleep in the small bedroom for a few hours now after Prompto put her to bed —and wasn’t that sort of weird to see, Prompto acting like a dad in the movies, tucking Helena in and promising to leave the door cracked open so she wouldn’t be left in the dark— but according to Prompto, she’s had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep for an hour or two, so Prompto’s committed himself to staying up longer than usual in case she does. Noct’s glad for the company, though he’s getting fairly tired himself.

“Yeah. They’re finishing up the little things now. Details, I guess. I don’t know that much about fixing up a house, actually.”

“Me neither,” Prompto says, then laughs a little. “Man, I just remembered. I used to say I was gonna learn, didn’t I? How to fix a house, I mean. Never got around to it, I guess. Got a bit sidetracked.”

Sidetracked… that’s one way to put it. Being pulled into Noct’s dangerous orbit via the Crownsguard and then the wedding trip and the war and the prophecy and the train and the… well. Noct takes a few seconds to steady his breathing, telling himself not to think about it too hard. “Guess you did. Still time to learn, I guess.”

“Ah, ship’s sailed on that one,” Prompto shrugs. “I’m pretty settled with this weapons repair thing, I think. Not looking for another career.”

“Not even photography?”

The thought of Prompto going the rest of his life without a camera in hand is just… it’s not right. It’s wrong. Noct’s always known Prompto to have his camera close by, even before they met properly and were just two ships passing in the night of elementary and middle school.

Prompto hums thoughtfully. “I dunno. Didn’t take a lot of photos during the Night. After a while, it just felt weird. Plus it was hard to get new memory cards for a while there, before we were able to get into Insomnia. Lighting kinda sucked everywhere, too. Hard to take a good picture when your lighting options are fluorescents, floodlights, or whatever the light was outside. Kind of greeny, kind of hazy. I dunno. You saw it for a little bit, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I remember.”

A silence settles over them, heavy.

“Doesn’t mean I won’t ever go back to it,” Prompto remarks, a little louder than the rest of the conversation had been. It has the air of embarrassment to it, or something like it. The way Prompto used to sound when trying to be a moodmaker and knowing he wasn’t quite up to snuff at the moment. Noct hates that impulse in him. He’s not responsible for making everyone around him happy— surely he knows that after all this time? “But not right now. Not for a job, anyway. The mechanic stuff pays the bills and keeps me busy.”

Noct is all too aware of how _not_ busy he’s been. When Ignis and Gladio are away, he spends a lot of time sleeping. When he’s not doing that, he’s sometimes reading —which he never had the patience for when he was younger but apparently he acquired it at some point among this mess— or playing games on his phone. Ignis offered to look for an old game system for Noct if he wanted one, but Noct refused. He already feels like a kid among adults a lot of the time, and he knows what people think of people in their thirties playing proper games like that to while away the hours. Especially since he doesn’t —can’t, at the moment— have a job or otherwise contribute to the rebuilding effort.

“Prompto?” A soft voice calls from behind the couch, in the direction of the small bedroom. Prompto blinks, then stands and leans over the back of the couch, smiling.

“Hey, Helena. Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” Helena ambles over to the couch, standing beside it awkwardly in her pajamas until Prompto invites her to sit beside him.

“Well, you can sit out here with me and Noct ‘til you feel sleepy again. Alright?” Prompto puts his arm around Helena’s shoulders and she leans into his side, eyes already more closed than not.

“Okay,” Helena speaks through a yawn.

She’s out in a matter of minutes, sleeping with her face smushed against Prompto’s ribs. Prompto pulls the blanket that had been draped over the back of the loveseat over Helena and tucks it in around her. “Sometimes she’s up for hours, sometimes it’s just like this. I usually let her be for a little while before carrying her back to bed. Don’t wanna wake her back up, y’know?” Prompto looks especially soft right now, his face tender and gentle in the soft glow of the lamp on the coffee table. Noct’s heart aches.

* * *

“Will you be alright on your own?”

“I’m literally gonna have a rotating guard, Ignis. That’s not really _alone_.”

“Well,” Ignis clears his throat. “Yes, you’re right. You haven’t spent a significant amount of time without one of us around since you returned, however. I wasn’t sure…”

“I’m alright, Iggy,” Noct shoves Ignis’s shoulder. “Go on, Lestallum’s waiting for you. It’s just a couple weeks. Keay will let you know if I spontaneously drop dead, alright?”

“Gods forbid,” Ignis does crack a grin at that, if a weak one. “After all the work we did.”

“Engine’s running,” Gladio peeks in the door. He already said his goodbyes before finishing packing the car, but Ignis has lingered longer than expected by the look of it. “Are you coming, or are you afraid a grown man’s gonna burn the house down while you’re not looking?”

“Right,” Ignis straightens out his shirt. “I’m coming.” Then to Noct: “Keep in touch. We are all a phone call away, understand?”

“I’m twe— I’m uh. I’m thirty, Ignis. I got it.”

Ignis still manages to stretch their farewell another several minutes, during which Gladio reappears in the doorway seemingly seconds away from dragging Ignis out bodily.

It wasn’t either of their idea to have to return to Lestallum so soon after moving Noct and most of their own possessions down to Caem, but apparently there are still several loose ends that need tying up before Ignis can properly work for the city at a distance. They’ll be gone several weeks, leaving Noct and a couple Hunters alone at the house. Noct isn’t too fond of the loneliness he knows will seep in after a day or two, but he is fond of being able to explore the space around Caem more or less on his own. He had stayed there every now and again back when the road trip was still on, but it wasn’t very often. They usually had business in other parts of Lucis, and the preparations that were needed to squeeze four extra men into a house already full with one or more person to a room were a bit too much of a hassle to force on Monica and Dustin too much.

“Majesty?”

Noct turns to see Keay standing by the back door, the one facing out toward the sea. “Yeah?”

“I believe you mentioned wanting to know if any strays wandered through the property, yes?”

“I did, yeah.”

“There seems to be a… there’s a cat outside.”

“Really?” Noct makes his way over to stand beside Keay, peering through the little window set in the door. “Where?”

“Over by the bushes, see? It’s orange.”

There _is_ a cat. It isn’t the same one that used to frequent the coast a decade ago. But there certainly is a cat sitting not too far from the back door: a small ginger thing with a striped tail wrapped delicately around dusty paws.

“Do you think we can get it?” Noct asks. He’s half tempted to open the door and make a break for the cat now, but he isn’t sure he could keep up if it decided to wander off. While his walker is plenty stable no matter the terrain, it still isn’t very fast on anything other than pavement or proper flooring.

“I can certainly try,” Keay hesitates. “I can’t make promises that I can catch it, Majesty. I’m fairly sure a cat could outrun me any day.”

“Don’t worry if it does,” Noct is eternally thankful that he weathered Ignis’s incredulity over Noct’s request for cat food to be added to Caem’s pantry. “I’ll set food out for it. It’ll be back, then.”

Keay doesn’t end up being able to catch the cat, but that’s alright. It gives Noct more time to figure out what exactly to do if he _does_ manage to pick up a stray. According to Ignis, there is still a vet caring for domestic animals set up in Lestallum. Neat.

“You’re really gonna try to get that cat?” Prompto asks during their daily call. It’s later than usual since Prompto was busy until long after sundown, but he still managed to call anyway. Noct’s glad for it. “What’s Ignis think about it?”

“He said he can’t stop me, though he will shut it out of his room if it breaks anything in there.”

“That’s fair,” Prompto says. “You know Maris has got a cat? Helena loves the thing, though it doesn’t like me much. His name’s Screwdriver.”

“Screwdriver?”

Prompto laughs. “Yeah, I know. Pretty weird name for sure. Maris picked him up off the street not too long after we settled down in Lestallum and she was still picking up how exactly names were supposed to work. I thought it was pretty funny so I didn’t say anything when she told me his name. She gets on me about it now, sometimes, but the name stuck. _Way_ too late to change it now.”

“Would you want a cat here?” Noct asks. Though Prompto isn’t living with him and Ignis and Gladio right now —and won’t for some time, as long as there’s no school set up nearby— Noct is still nervous about doing anything that could jeopardize that future possibility.

“Sure. I like ‘em well enough when they like me, y’know? So if you do end up catching that little guy, no worries there. Send me pics, too.”

Noct promises to do so. He and Prompto continue chatting late into the night, and Noct ends up falling asleep on the line. When he wakes up the next morning, he realizes the call was left on for hours after he last remembered checking the time.

Did Prompto leave the line running on purpose? Did he fall asleep too?

Noct stares at the call history log and wonders.

* * *

The text Noct wakes up to, three weeks after his move to Caem and one after Ignis and Gladio had to return to Lestallum, reads like so: “Looks like your favorite pal is coming to visit!”

Noct, bleary eyed, sends back a solitary question mark before falling back asleep. Once he finally is properly up for the day quite a few hours later, Prompto has sent him several messages elaborating on the situation. Ignis and Gladio’s work trip in Lestallum has been extended, and Prompto’s decided to come visit on his own for a couple weeks, with Helena staying with Maris in the meantime. Noct isn’t sure how to feel about it. On one hand, it will be good to see Prompto again. On the other hand, Noct is starting to feel pretty bad about how much his friends are putting themselves out going back and forth for him. Not to mention how off-kilter Noct still feels about some things about Prompto.

The memory of their past relationship that Prompto hasn’t so much as hinted at despite no proper split between them—does being consumed by a rock as part of a prophesied murder-suicide plot by a god count as an automatic breakup?— is eating at Noct more and more the longer the silence goes on. He doesn’t want to make Prompto uncomfortable by bringing it up, especially since Prompto seems really happy with the new life and the new family he has these days, but Noct aches for resolution at least. He doesn’t expect Prompto would want to rekindle something so far gone, but well. Noct can’t help but want to have a concrete end to it all at least.

Prompto shows up the next night, bright and cheery despite the late hour. Noct’s not feeling particularly great when Prompto shows up, and claims tiredness before showing Prompto to the guest room and retiring to his own bed. Noct doesn’t end up sleeping for a few hours though, cursing himself for shutting himself up in his bedroom instead of spending time with his friend.

Noct doesn’t really understand what he’s doing. He doesn’t feel thirty, but he’s certainly not twenty anymore. He was meant to be dead, but he’s not. He’s meant to be a king, but he’s away living a life of casual domesticity in an old house by the sea. What is he doing? This isn’t how any of this is supposed to go. Why can’t he get past the feelings that are still blurring the edges of himself whenever he thinks about Prompto? Why can’t he accept the fact that the world has changed far beyond what Noct could have imagined and the people he love have changed in ways that don’t always make sense to him? Prompto’s a dad with a family and no interest in a relationship, Ignis has loosened up and isn’t constantly tying himself in knots trying to fulfill all the responsibilities of he was raised for the way he used to, and Gladio has long since gotten past his ties with family duty to anyone beyond his sister, and has simply become friend and brother rather than Shield. Everything is the same, but blurred and stretched into directions that Noct can’t wrap his head around. A lot of the changes are good. It’s good to see everyone happy, but... Noct isn’t sure where he fits in any of it anymore.

* * *

The lighthouse is in great condition, all things considered. Noct had been afraid that the lift wouldn’t work or the floors would be too unstable to support someone’s weight but after a thorough check by both Gladio and Richardson, everything seemed perfectly safe. Noct’s taken to spending time up there in the evenings, watching the sunset over the water.

He is there now, leaning against the center pillar of the lighthouse. He had a bit of a strange day, having participated in a meeting about the future of the government in Lucis over video call. He’s still in the nicer clothes he wore for appearance’s sake, and the collared suit jacket and slacks feel somewhat constricting after spending so long in what Ignis would generously call _stay at home clothes_.

It was decided that Lucis, and Eos as a whole most likely, would be continuing on its current path toward creating a common democratic republic. Noct has been, for all intents and purposes, cut loose from the responsibility of maintaining a kingdom. They were clear that he would still receive protection as the former king, and would have a place in the cabinet of the newborn government if he wished to take it, but Noct declined. He was never one for politics, really. Ignis was always better at all of that. Best make that place go toward someone who knows what they’re doing rather than someone who had the misfortune of just sort of being born into a now-obsolete bloodline.

Noct has now been made redundant. He’s little more than a vestigial limb from a past that has been shattered and swept away. He fulfilled his purpose as the Chosen King and, thanks to something his friends did that he isn’t sure they will ever tell him about, he’s still around afterward.

What is he still here for?

The lift rattles. Noct turns, watching the lower button beside the doors blink on as the elevator descends. Someone’s coming up to see him, then. Probably Richardson. He hasn’t been fond of how Noct will sometimes wander off without saying anything. Noct moves his walker out of the way of the door.

“There you are,” Prompto grins as he steps out of the lift. “Thought you’d be up here.”

“Hey,” Noct, tired and unsettled as he is, still has the wherewithal to smile back. Prompto has always seemed to have this contagious aura of energy about him. “How’s it going?”

“It’s alright,” Prompto shrugs. “Just got off the phone with Maris and Helena. Helena’s finally gotten over that cold, and is wanting to come down here to visit. I told her we have to wait until school’s on break and she wasn’t a big fan of that one.”

“Really?” Noct can imagine the little pout she’d put on. He hasn’t seen it very often, but honestly it’s near-identical to the one Prompto would jokingly wear after begging Ignis to cook his favorite meal out on the road. “What’s she wanting to do down here?”

“She wants to see the ocean,” Prompto settles against the wall beside Noct. “Plus she misses her Uncle Noct.”

“Uncle… Noct?”

“Sure. We always told her a lot about you, y’know. She calls Ignis and Gladio _uncle_ too, so. It didn’t take long for her to place you in that circle too after we started talking about you more during the Night.”

“Right,” Noct blinks. It feels… well, he isn’t sure what to do with that. Prompto’s little girl has more or less inducted him into their family without his knowing. Supposedly long before they had ever met. “I…”

The silence stretches. Prompto’s brow furrows, and he leans toward Noct. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Noct is surprised by how easy it is to say. He usually can’t spit out anything about his feelings even if his life depended on it. “Everything is just so different. I’m not even supposed to be alive anymore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. You won’t even tell me what you did to bring me back, but it was risky, wasn’t it? Why did you do that?”

Prompto stiffens. He opens his mouth to respond, but flounders for words. Noct can’t stop himself from continuing, not now that he’s finally saying what’s been in the backdrop of his skull ever since he woke up alive when he should have been dead.

“I barely know who anyone is anymore. I’m not supposed to be here and I can tell. I can feel it.”

“Noct—” “You have lives. Families. The world put back together. What did you put all of that in jeopardy for? Why would you put everything at risk like that?”

“Because we love you,” Prompto takes Noct by the shoulders. Noct, startled out of his spiralling rant, meets Prompto’s eyes. “I love you, Noct. We want you here, damn the gods. Damn the prophecy. I… shit, Noct. We didn’t give a damn what we were risking, because you’re important to us. To _me_.”

Now it’s Noct’s turn to struggle for words. He is overly aware of Prompto’s hands on his shoulders, his fingers curling into the fabric of Noct’s jacket. _I love you_ , he said. _I love you_.

“You think that once the Night happened we just forgot about how we feel about you? That you just became some… I don’t know, some tool to fix the apocalypse that we could just abandon once you did your job?”

“I don’t know. No, I guess. I don’t…”

“Noct, you and I were _together_. We had talked about getting married someday, if somehow someday you were free from the throne. Did you think I forgot all about that?”

“You never said,” Noct’s heart is beating fast, dizzyingly fast. He feels out of breath, he feels fever-hot. Prompto’s face is so close to his. “When I came back, you never said. I thought you… it was ten years ago. I thought you moved on.”

“From you?” Prompto laughs. “Couldn’t for the world, buddy. I didn’t want to overwhelm you after you _literally_ died, so I waited for you to make the first move. If you still wanted to, I guess. Looks like that was kind of stupid of me, huh?”

Noct feels like he’s being held up by Prompto alone, at this point. His legs are weak. He reaches up with both hands, cradling Prompto’s face between them. It’s still Prompto. He’s older, his jawline a little squarer and his eyes a little more tired, his face lined in places it never had been before but… it’s still the same Prompto. Not a stranger. Prompto’s smile grows, reaching his eyes.

“You don’t have to be the king of anything for me to care about you. You don’t have to be anything more than you. Alright? And if you want to, if you still love me like you did ten years ago, I’m here. Okay? You have a place here. You have a place with me. You always have. I know I’m busy and I have Helena to take care of and being in a relationship with a kid is sort of a lot, but if you want it I—”

Noct kisses him.


End file.
